LuLu's Desperate House Dogs (formerly the Bow Wow Blog)

LuLu's Desperate House Dogs is a blog about an eccentric little Beagle named LuLu, who, along with her sister Sadie (a Whippet/Terrier/Beagle blend), writes the lurid Puppies in Lust series, and absorbs local color in an idyllic, off-the-leash, canine-centered village known as Lincoln Park~

Friday, August 03, 2007

Tonight Sam Spencer escapes the dog catcher and winds up making some interesting new friends. As for what kind of shamus carries a pacifier -- try to overlook it~ (Photo by J.M. Hilton)

posted by LuLu @ 10:28 PM 

6 Comments:

Blogger LuLu said...

The Maltese Chew Toy (continued)

Sam found few useful clues outside the cottage. He inhaled the stench of blood along with an odor very similar to that of Mrs. Petoma's tea bags, an undefinable metal scent, a scent which made Sam's nostrils burn.

He slipped easily into the dark house through a side window the police had forgotten to close. A small nightlight plugged into a hallway outlet made it possible for him to make out jumbled shapes.

As his eyes became accustomed to the dark, he realized that the inside of the cottage was a littered mess. Sam guess the place had never been a photo-shoot setting for Better Homes & Gardens, but it actually made his own patch of earth back on Post Street seem uncluttered -- and that was saying very much, indeed.

Blinds and curtains had been ripped from windows, furniture overturned, and clothing strewn throughout. Most of it was men's apparel, but a few items obviously belonged to a woman -- in fact, to one specific woman. Each dainty item of her clothing smelled strongly of peach soap.

Certain odors lingered just outside his range of definition, so overpowered were they by stronger smells. There was a light perfume, oddly familiar, but too faint for him to place, and the scent of leather and polish. He thought he recognized the leather-and-polish smell and tried to focus in on it, but it was too intermingled with other scents to properly jog his memory.

Sam kept an eye out for the chew toy Brigid wanted, but he really didn't expect to find it; nothing was ever that easy, but if the gunsel had been looking for the toy, Sam guessed he hadn't found it either -- not if he left the scene angry and cursing.

Sam checked and rechecked, sniffed and pawed. He slipped back through the window just as dawn was breaking, sat down and contemplatively scratched at a flea.

He needed to talk to a hot little Maltese named Brigid, who lived somewhere over on Nob Hill.

But first, thought Sam, he needed to find a garbage can.

He was hungry -- as hungry as a shark who had gone three days without a minnow. He padded down Bush Street, his nose twitching purposefully, as streaks of coral sunlight licked the morning sky like puppies' tongues. He spotted a dingy alleyway and his nose told him exactly what to expect there.

Sam poked his head around the corner and caught sight of two large, overturned cans. He also caught sight of a scrawny tail extending out of one of them.

"Move over, Moe," he said. "I'm coming inside."

The cat startled and arched his skinny, striped back, all the while hissing with a ferocity born of desperation.

"Relax," said Sam, dropping into the play position and slowly wagging his tail. "I've just come from a massacre, gooseberry, and I don't need any trouble from you. Something smells fishy around here, and I haven't had breakfast yet."

(Story continued below...)

11:14 PM  
Blogger LuLu said...

Story cont'd...

The cat held his ground, but the height of his hair lessened. "Who in the dog pile are you?" he asked. "I thought I knew every worthless piece of cur meat in the neighborhood."

Sam's brown eyes hardened. "Let's say I'm not worthless," he suggested. "Let's also say I'm not from the neighborhood. Make you feel better?"

"Not hardly," replied the cat. "Then again, you don't look like nobody likely to stay here. You ain't no mutt, that's for sure -- not with them curly ears and well-turned hocks."

"I am what I am," Sam growled, pushing past the cat and poking his nose into Garbage Can #1. "While we're on the subject, where are all those other worthless pieces of cur meat that you just mentioned? I haven't seen another dog all morning."

The cat's yellow eyes glinted with malice. "Dogs around here need their beauty sleep."

"And cats around here are not very creative liars," said Sam, as he hauled the remains of a large mackerel from the second garbage can onto the cracked pavement.

"You planning on eating it all?" asked the cat, a whine in his wail. "I'm meaning to tell you, I ain't had my breakfast neither."

Sam decided to play fair, but not too fair. "You can have my leavings, but only if you'll go away and LEAVE me alone."

The cat did not take the hint. "Nobleness Obligates, eh? You know, I'd say you was some fancy kind of spaniel. Granted, your hair needs groomed like a jungle needs mowed, but you're the real thing. What'd you do -- run away from home?"

Sam ignored him and began masticating the mackerel.

(Story cont'd below...)

11:31 PM  
Blogger LuLu said...

Story cont'd...

The cat tried again. "Okay, so who got killed in the massacre? Me, I hate blood and guts, unless they're part of a snack, but I sure wouldn't mind seein' a bad pussy name of Ricardo get his. Runned over, mauled by dogs -- don't much matter to me. He's another stranger. Been runnin' around here, eating our birds, serenadin' our ladies. You know what I'm saying to you?"

Sam looked up, licking his chops. "Ricardo's gone," he said. "Left the neighborhood early this morning to do a slow waltz on a catnip-scented mattress with a kitty by the name of Chopsticks over in Chinatown. You can relax, pal."

But Sam got the opposite reaction.

The cat's hair stood on end again, like he'd just been given the juice at the Big House, and he meowed two words, the second of which was "you."

"Now that's not at all nice," Sam told him, "and here we were about to become friends."

"Chopsticks is my personal lap of cream!" yowled the cat, who then whipped himself into a feline frenzy and spat out a pack of imprecations, mostly involving rabid mastiffs, runaway cement trucks, and Sam's private parts.

"Wow," commented Sam when the cat finally paused to suck air and straighten out his whiskers. "Maybe you should paw it down to Hollywood and try to get into some gangster movies, what with that scowl and nasty hiss of yours -- or do you prefer to spend your time jumping out of alleyways and scaring little kids?"

"Listen, you," the cat warmed up again, his eyes ablaze, his whiskers quivering.

But Sam wasn't having any. "No, you listen, gooseberry! No wonder that kitty over in Chinatown prefers Ricardo to you, and I'm not sharing my breakfast with a ferocious feline that needs to be locked up in a cattery for crazies. Now, beat it, Oil Can Harry, or I'll turn my teeth on you!"

The cat scooted to the entrance of the alleyway, his eyes hot with rage. "You'll soon find out where all the other pieces of cur meat around here have gone," he meowed maliciously, and left -- taking his bad grammar and rank odor with him.

Sam wolfed down the rest of the fish, while briefly trying to figure out cats. He decided it was a wasted effort. They were as inexplicable as bitches and a whole lot less fun.

His hunger slaked, Sam left the alleyway and headed back toward Bush Street.

"What do we have here?" boomed the voice of a heavy-booted two-footer, and Sam looked up into the cold, hard eyes of the local dogcatcher.

(Story continued next week.)

12:25 AM  
Blogger LuLu said...

The Maltese Chew Toy (continued)

Sam Spencer was decidedly an expert when it came to fogging rats, and he was equally adept at outfoxing dogcatchers. As the hefty two-footer standing in front of him prepared to hurl his nets, Sam charged him, darting between two meaty thighs, and took off across Bush Street, dodging past cars and trucks, and finally hopping onto the wide running board of a regal Dusenberg Convertible Sedan on its way toward cable car heaven.

The dogcatcher was still trying to get the engine in his truck to turn over when Sam, aboard his gleaming chariot, vanished from sight.

One day, thought Sam, as a salty breeze whipped at his curly ears. One day, perhaps. But he was a young dog at the top of his game, and today would not be that day.

Ten minutes later he was walking up Powell Street in the heart of the city's legendary Nob Hill, his nose twitching industriously -- when he spied a patch of earth that looked eerily familiar.

There was a high fence surrounded by bushes -- very graceful rhododendron shrubs in this case, and next to a loose wooden slat was a telltale hole, which appeared to be well used.

Sam lifted his head and sniffed the air. Expensive perfume mingled with the scents of posies and dog urine -- all welcoming aromas. Sam slipped under the fence and resurfaced in a different world.

There, in the side court of a noble old apartment house in Greek Revival style, was a neatly laid out semiformal garden. Seated within were two dogs and a bitch, posed and poised -- looking set to have their photos snapped for the newspaper society section.

"I say!" barked a youngish Old English sheep dog, who then said nothing further, while a studly, fawn-colored boxer rose with his hackles.

"Hold it, boys," cooed the bitch, a voluptuous little Pekingese whose sleek coat was almost as white as Brigid's. "Handsome visitors are always welome, providing they know how to behave."

"But this mutt's not someone we know," protested the boxer. "Look at that untrimmed coat! And those ears! Harpo Marx has a better hair cut!"

The Pekingese ignored the jibes; instead she wagged her silky tail at Sam and allowed him to see a quick flash of her undercoat. Her flea powder smelled like violets.

"What's up, honey?" she asked him, "and don't you dare tell me the truth."

Sam liked her. "Nice patch of earth you got here," he observed, taking in the apartment house and a smaller, but equally elegant, connecting mansion. "You dogs must belong to some pretty fancy two-footers."

The Pekingese stuck out her dainty purple tongue while her black eyes did a merry dance. "This is Madame Volusia's place, honey," she told him. "My mistress runs what is politely referred to as a 'private hotel for gentlemen.' The mansion is the actual hotel, and the apartment house is more of a hot pillow joint."

Story continued below...

12:06 AM  
Blogger LuLu said...

Story cont'd...

"Oh," said Sam, "a cathouse."

The boxer's hackles rose again. "Cats! What do you take us for?"

"Relax, for heaven's sake," said the little Pekingese, before turning back to Sam. "I'm Dollybelle, and the two clowns defending my virtue are Donnybrook and Gladstone. What's your name, honey?"

"Sam Spencer, private eye," he told her.

"A gumshoe?" growled the boxer (Donnybrook?), while the sheep dog did his best to look menacing, and failed.

"I don't wear shoes," Sam pointed out, and neither do you, gooseberry. How 'bout you can the attitude?"

The boxer rose to his paws and growled. "I think you need to be taught a lesson, curly boy."

But Dollybelle was having none of it. "You seem to forget that you and Gladstone are simply guests of the establishment, Donny," she said. "One of Miss Volusia's cardinal rules is that we don't have altercations here. Now, if you can't abide by the rules, you'll have to go somewhere else to wait for your master -- and since he uses walking you only as an excuse to get away from his wife in the first place, I doubt he'll be too happy if you aren't where he expects you to be when he's finished upstairs."

"But, Dollybelle," the boxer argued, "this cur is not our kind. Well, he may be our kind but he's not in our league. That is to say...oh, who cares?" And he picked up a rubber ball and ran off with it.

Dollybelle cut her shoe-button eyes back to Sam. "So, why are you here, handsome?" she asked him, "and don't try to paw me off with any mealy biscuits soaked in lumpy gravy."

Story continued below...

12:44 AM  
Blogger LuLu said...

Story cont'd...

Sam didn't.

"I need some information," he told her. "I need to find Bugsy Gatthamer's house."

"Great dog star! What on earth for?" asked Dollybelle. "Are you sure you know what you're about, Sam?"

Before he could reply, Gladstone came out of his coma. "I know where the place is!" he barked. "It's a spooky old house over on Pine Street, one that managed to survive the '06 earthquake. There's a big iron fence around it, and some seriously mean dogs live there."

Dollybelle gave a short growl, and Sam gave her a questioning look.

"Gatthamer's not a two-footer anybody wants in the neighborhood," Gladstone went on. "He's a mobster, you know?"

Sam thumped his tail. "Uh, yeah, I've heard rumors to that effect."

"Be very careful if you're going to Gatthamer's place, honey," Dollybelle cautioned, "although not all the dogs over there are mean. If you get in any trouble, ask to see a dog named Murray -- and mention my name."

Sam was surprised. "You don't mean to tell me that Gatthamer used to hang out here?"

"Sucking sand fleas, no!" she declared. "Miss Volusia caters only to the ultra elite: captains of industry, visiting royalty, even the occasional politician on a bad night -- but never Bugsy Gatthamer! He couldn't make it past the front door, but his dog Murray is welcome under my fence any old time."

"A case of the master being a cur but the dog being a gentleman?" Sam asked her.

She wagged her tail. "Something like that," she agreed.

Sam thanked Dollybelle, accepted a very unmealy dog biscuit from her, smirked at both Donnybrook and Gladstone, then scooted under the fence again. He raised his leg and left his mark on a nearby fire hydrant just for the fun of it, before padding his way over to Pine Street, where he hoped to find a little Maltese named Brigid...and maybe some answers.

Story continued next week.

1:05 AM  

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